Discourses of Gender and Power in Post-Soviet Ukraine (Research Brief)

The ideology I describe reinforces bilingualism as it opposes the promotion of either language at the expense of the other. Also, the separation and purity of languages is emphasized as people are expected to use the language they know best, and not to mix or switch between Ukrainian and Russian. As I explore in more detail below, this idea of bilingualism is evident in advertising and is promoted in TV shows where two hosts speak different languages to one another without accommodating. But this ideology does not go unchallenged, as we can see in some hip-hop music.

Download the pdf at the top of this page for the full brief.

Laada Bilaniuk, of the University of Washington, was a 2001-02 Individual Advanced Research Opportunities (IARO) fellow.